


Lucid dreamer

by ToxicPineapple



Series: Kaemaki Week 2020 [3]
Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Akamatsu Kaede is Really Gay.jpg, Alternate Universe - Non-Despair (Dangan Ronpa), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Conversations, Dreams, F/F, First Meetings, Kaemaki Week, Kaemaki Week 2020, Music, Pre-Relationship, Romance, Soulmates, You won't GUESS what the prompt is for this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:34:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25080220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToxicPineapple/pseuds/ToxicPineapple
Summary: When Akamatsu Kaede met her soulmate for the very first time,she was dreaming.---Kaede meets her soulmate.---Kaemaki week day three: Dream/Music
Relationships: Akamatsu Kaede/Harukawa Maki
Series: Kaemaki Week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1821460
Comments: 10
Kudos: 48





	Lucid dreamer

**Author's Note:**

> written for kaemaki week day three! the prompts was dream/music
> 
> this takes place in a soulmates au where you meet your soulmate through dreams until you eventually meet in person. :3
> 
> also. there are platonic soulmates. i feel a need to specify this. ON the record. aromantics have rights. qpp soulmates rise up

When Akamatsu Kaede met her soulmate for the very first time,

she was dreaming.

It was hard for her to tell that she was dreaming at first, because while everything was hazy, blurring in and out, swirling in hues of pink and red all around her, (in that way that dreams so often do,) it was also a dream, which meant Kaede couldn’t remember a time when things hadn’t been that way. She was never a very lucid dreamer. Far be it for her to just take things at face value, accept them as they were presented, but in dreams the desire for that sort of… faded away.

Maybe because they were dreams. Maybe because Kaede wasn’t, as mentioned, a lucid dreamer. Whatever the reason was, she never knew how to tell.

But she thought that it might have been a dream when her soulmate showed up, because there was soft music,

a song she recognised but couldn’t name,

playing around her, on the violin,

and there was a cool, fresh-smelling breeze going by, and it rose goosebumps on her arms, and she couldn’t stop shivering,

and the girl standing in front of her was the most beautiful girl she’d ever seen in her life.

Kaede knew she had never seen this girl before.

She was certain she would recognise such a pretty face.

In fact, it was almost remarkable how lovely the girl was, the one who was standing in front of Kaede, her silky brown hair blowing in the breeze, her eyes glistening like rubies and gazing, thoughtfully, at Kaede. Her lip was pulled, though it was difficult to tell what exactly she was thinking, what she was feeling; her expression was, in other words, inscrutable. There was a beauty mark beneath her left eye, framed by thick, dark lashes, and her brows were raised very slightly.

Her gaze weight a million pounds, yet under it Kaede felt comfortable and warm and easy, and it was,

(in the past, when people stared her down like that, all Kaede wanted was to run, to run run run and get away, get out, get as far from them as possible, because she didn’t like being looked at by unsmiling eyes, preferred another person’s gaze to be affixed to her hands, and of course she wasn’t intimidated or anything but it was heavy and uncomfortable and Kaede didn’t like it at all,)

it was like the most natural thing Kaede had ever felt in her life.

It was like she’d known this girl, all her life, impassive as she was, impossible to read as she was. It was like Kaede couldn’t look anywhere but at her face, didn’t want to even try.

When the girl spoke,

and she did speak, of course she did,

her voice was low.

A contralto, easily, a lovely, rasping contralto that rested in the back of her throat. She had a very slight lisp, and she spoke with a carefulness, a precision to her every word. Kaede saw that very same precision flickering in her gem-like eyes, and in every crease in her carefully straightened out features. Her voice was low and steady and flat. It barely lilted at all, actually.

Granted, she didn’t say much. When she spoke, all she said was,

“I didn’t think you existed,”

and then she gave Kaede a suspicious, almost expectant look, as though she was supposed to explain why she existed. If Kaede had had an answer, she probably would’ve tried to give it, too, smitten as she was by this girl who she was almost certainly dreaming.

And if Kaede was a more lucid dreamer, she might’ve registered that the only people you met in dreams were soulmates, people who you were connected to in a way you weren’t with anybody else. She might have registered that this girl, whose features were too sharp, too lovely for Kaede to have seen before in real life, was her soulmate, the person who she was linked to, who she was supposed to be in love with.

She wasn’t, though, she wasn’t, so when she spoke, all she said, was,

“Ahaha, uhm,”

and she made a stupid gesture with her hands,

“surprise!”

The girl gave her a skeptical look then, her brow quirking further, and Kaede nearly cringed, feeling like a moron, like an idiot, and she almost opened her mouth to rescind the words, apologise-- for what? For existing?-- but then the girl smiled, barely, an almost imperceptible twitch of her mouth, a glimmer entering her red eyes, and Kaede’s heart fluttered.

“Can I,” she cleared her throat, tried to focus on her thoughts, rather than the exquisite red hue, and it was insanely difficult, actually, “can I ask why you didn’t think I existed? Have we met? I-In another dream, maybe?”

_ “No,” _ said the girl.

She paused.

_ “Maybe. Maybe we have, I,” _ she lifted one of her hands, and Kaede’s eyes clung to it, memorised the shape, memorised the placement of every single little scar--

and at the sight of the scars Kaede’s gaze moved, further up the girl’s bare forearm, and there were so many scars, burn scars, other kinds of scars Kaede couldn’t name, hadn’t seen before, couldn’t understand, why would there be such things on such a lovely girl--

and she tucked a brown strand of hair behind her ear. A golden beam of light caught one of the pale studs in her lobe, and Kaede’s gaze went there, next.

It was difficult for her to decide where to look. This girl was, scars and all, breathtaking. Kaede’s face, as little as she registered it in this chilly dream, felt a little bit warm, and her heart was beating a bit harder than she was used to. It wasn’t a bad feeling by far-- in fact it felt a bit like being alive, even in a dream-- but still, but still, she didn’t want to be lighting up like a tomato like this.

_ “If we have met,” _

the girl began, and Kaede realised she was still speaking,

_ “I don’t remember it.” _

She looked at Kaede again, her gaze oddly… warm. Oddly… inquisitive.

_ “But it’s possible that we’ve met. Apparently you’re supposed to,”  _ and she paused to gesticulate,  _ “meet your soulmate in more than one dream. So maybe.” _

“Soulmate?” Kaede repeated.

The girl gave Kaede an annoyed look.

“You’re-- you’re my soulmate?” Kaede sputtered a little bit, and felt her face warm further as the annoyance in the other girl’s expression sharpened.

_ “Don’t you know about them? The-- the dreams.” _

“I, do,” Kaede said, because she did, “it’s just, I’m not,”

and she fumbled a little, because the girl’s annoyance made her heart race for maybe not entirely heterosexual reasons,

“I’m not the most lucid dreamer.”

_ “I can tell,”  _ the girl said, and Kaede felt herself smiling sheepishly,

and the annoyed look melted off the girl’s face.

She sighed.  _ “Well, if you’re not lucid, that’s not very good news for either of us, because I’m, not too familiar with the whole, soulmate thing.” _

“Because you didn’t think I existed?”

Kaede couldn’t help sounding a little amused. A laugh bubbled out of her when the girl glared.

There was a silence--

that wasn’t really a silence, because of the violin playing around them, and Kaede almost felt as though there was something missing, there was something she  _ should  _ have been hearing underneath it, but she wasn’t, and it seemed, bottomless, but nonetheless the music was there,

\--and then she (she as in the girl) heaved a sigh, opening her mouth to speak again.

_ “Sure, we can go with that,”  _ and it was such a weird answer for what felt like a fairly straightforward question,

but maybe this girl had some secrets to hide.

And just because Kaede was her soulmate, apparently, the one who she was supposed to meet in her dreams, that didn’t mean that she had to share them.

It was,

okay.

Kaede had some secrets to hide of her own.

And maybe someday she would share them.

They both would,

maybe.

“Uhm, well,”

and Kaede lifted a hand to clasp on the back of her neck but faltered halfway through, found herself reaching out instead, reaching and reaching and reaching unto her fingers brushed against the girl’s cheek,

and she flinched a bit, just a bit, but ultimately leaned her cheek into Kaede’s touch,

and Kaede filled with warmth,

“if you’re my soulmate, maybe I should… tell you my name?”

The girl raised an eyebrow.  _ “Should you?” _

Kaede smiled a little bit,

and they looked at each other for a moment.

“Akamatsu Kaede,”

Akamatsu Kaede said,

“that’s me.”

The girl blinked her ruby red eyes and eventually, slowly, carefully replied, in that deliberate way of hers,

_ “Harukawa Maki,” _

and after a moment she added,

_ “that’s me.” _

Harukawa Maki,

was a ruby red name that smelled like sweetness and sounded like the violin. It was a name like long dark eyelashes and a flat contralto and little beauty marks. It was a name like scars littering pale arms and  _ I didn’t think you existed  _ and lucid dreams and wind and bottomless music. It was a name Kaede had heard before, but she didn’t know when, didn’t know where, didn’t know  _ why,  _ it was--

It was the name of her soulmate, Harukawa Maki with an oddly warm and oddly inquisitive gaze, and Kaede felt that she’d heard it before, but in her heart, in her  _ soul,  _ where it was meant to be.

“I look forward to seeing you again, then, Maki-chan!” Kaede said, and she beamed, and watched a brilliant pink spread across Harukawa Maki’s cheeks.

_ “...sure,”  _ Maki returned,

and she smiled,

_ “me, too.” _

(Akamatsu Kaede woke up the next morning to sunlight streaming through her curtains, and suddenly remembered where she’d heard that song before, one  _ Sonata In a Major for Violin and Piano, FWV 8: I. Allegretto Ben Moderato,  _ and the thing that she’d noticed during her dream was that she only heard the violin, there was no,

piano,

underneath.

Lucky for Harukawa Maki, however, if there was one thing Akamatsu Kaede could do,

if not have a lucid dream,

it was play the piano.

And she knew the song by heart without having to look at any sheet music.)

Kaede wondered if Maki knew how to play the violin.

**Author's Note:**

> so anyway
> 
> i'm proud of this one :3


End file.
